Chapter 25 #2
I sat still and silent, staring at nothing for a long while as he packed his small bag. When he finished, he crossed to me and held out his hand. I didn’t take it. I couldn’t even look at it.
He sighed. “Listen, I’ll…I might be hard to get in touch with this week. We’ll catch up when I get back, ok?”
I couldn’t talk, and if I met his gaze, I would burst into tears.
Therefore, I didn’t move. After a long moment, he reached down and pulled me up by the shoulders, lifted my chin, and pressed a devastating kiss on my mouth.
He was warm and soft and wet and just delicious.
His hands moved down my sides, his thumbs grazed against my breasts, and my body responded to him, to his petting, without the permission of my mind.
Then he broke the kiss and turned away.
I wanted to scream, throw things, threaten, issue ultimatums. I wanted to shake him and ask him why he suddenly felt it necessary to rip out my heart. Instead, I watched him walk out the door and away from me—from us.
Then, like the watering pot that I’d become, I cried.
Saturday was a terrible day. I stayed up long enough to administer Angelica’s infusion then I went to sleep. And, yes, I slept in Nico’s bed because it smelled like him. I woke up in the afternoon just long enough to administer Angelica’s next dose then went back to bed.
Rose chased me back into Nico’s room and plied me with food. To my utter mystification, she didn’t seem curious about why my eyes were puffy or why Nico had left so early. This lack of needling threw me for a loop, and I ended up blurting out, “Nico and I had a fight!”
Rose’s mouth hooked to the side. She gazed at me through her black lashes. “L’amore non è bello se non è litigarello.”1
“Please, Rose, what does that mean?”
“It means you both have passion for each other, and you have love for each other too. You should expect fights; fights are good for the soul and the body.”
I studied her, nonplussed. “My training tells me that stress is bad for the body; how can fights be good for the body?”
“Because after a fight, there is always the making up.”
My eyes popped out of my head, my jaw fell open, and—despite or because of my heartbreak—I laughed. I laughed with the hysteria that accompanies helplessness. It felt good to laugh because it wasn’t crying.
When I calmed down, she handed me the plate of food and supervised my consumption of it.
She made idle chitchat about different sights that she and Angelica were planning to see and about a recent visit with her daughter Lisa.
I half listened. She didn’t seem to notice or, if she did, she didn’t seem to mind my absence of attention.
After Rose felt that I’d eaten enough, she stood and reached for the plate. She didn’t offer a sympathetic smile, which I felt would have been appropriate considering the situation. Instead, she gave me an affectionate, maternal smile; it was heavy with knowing wisdom and patience.
“Ah, Lizzybella, you will be fine. He is not perfect, he will make mistakes and so will you. It’s good that you discover this now. But you are perfect for each other.” She nodded, and her smile grew as though she were amused.
She was right. He wasn’t perfect. He was making a new mistake by pushing me away and I was making an old mistake by letting him go.
“I’m so tired of making mistakes.”
Rose patted my hand. “Here is something for you, and I will tell you what it means—okay?”
I nodded. The food felt like a brick in my stomach. I just wanted to go to sleep.
“Amore non si compra né si vende, ma in premio d’amor, amor si rende. It means that love cannot be bought nor sold, but the prize of love is love.”
I nodded, again on the verge of tears. She kissed my head then left me.
As soon as the door closed, I flopped on the bed. I lost the final battle and, therefore, the war against my irrationality, and cried myself to sleep on Nico’s pillow.
I tried to call Nico on Sunday morning. He didn’t answer. I tried again Sunday night. He didn’t answer. I texted him. He didn’t respond.
I hated Nico Manganiello.
I hated that, since he’d left, I walked around like half a person. I hated that I found nothing enjoyable—not knitting, not yoga, not Star Trek and Captain Janeway, not . Mostly, I hated that I loved him so much.
Work helped a little. I was busy at work. My mind was preoccupied with the problems of others, which put my issues into perspective.
I kept trying to reason with myself that Nico would be back in a week. In one week, I would tell him that I wanted us to be together, and that would be that—I hoped.
I realized, however, that I had absolutely no control over him and his feelings or his decisions.
I might spend the next week falling more and more hopelessly in love with him.
Meanwhile, he might spend the next week falling more and more out of love with my petty, immature, emotionally stunted self.
Or maybe I was being too hard on myself. And maybe I needed to stop. Perhaps I deserved better. Perhaps I should demand better.
I needed to do something, stop making the same mistakes. I felt frustration.
I felt fear.
Therefore, Sunday night I resorted to asking Rose if she would call him to see if he answered. She happily agreed and dialed his number. Again, he didn’t answer. However, he immediately texted her back.
“What does it say? What did he say?” I bounced from one foot to the other, impatient to see the screen.
Her brows lifted but her face was calm and passive. “Here, you can read it yourself.”
She held the phone out to me, and I took it from her hands and greedily read the screen: Tell Elizabeth to stop calling.
I read and reread it a few times. My heart sank. I handed her the phone and buried my face in my hands. I felt the despair of being left.
Work officially began at 5:00 pm on Monday, but I arrived early. I left my building right after Angelica’s 2:00 pm infusion. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I arrived shortly after 3:00 pm and immediately started seeing patients.
I noted that both Meg and Dr. Ken Miles were also working in the ER.
Dr. Ken Miles, unfortunately, noticed me, despite my efforts to slip stealthily into clinic rooms under the radar.
At one point, while I was charting between patients, he seemed to be speaking especially loudly in the next alcove about something—a girl, a conquest. I heard the word ‘tits’.
I rolled my eyes. For as much as he liked to point his finger at me, as much as he liked to say that I was immature because of my harmless, lighthearted pranks, he was one hundred times worse.
As evidence, I reasoned, he used the same finger to pick his nose that he used to point out my immaturity.
I skipped my dinner break, preferring instead the distraction of people with real problems, and redoubled my efforts to ignore him.
This was easy to do at first. But then, just as I was making my way up to the fourth floor to meet Rose and Angelica for the evening visit, Dr. Ken Miles stepped out of a clinic room and bisected my elevator trajectory.
My guard, Dan, hastened forward and walked at my elbow, apparently planning to usher me past Dr. Ken Miles, who stood in the center of the hall and glared at us, his pale blue eyes focused on mine.
“Hey. We need to talk.” He lifted his chin toward me; his face was marred with an unhappy frown that didn’t diminish his prettiness. Instead of looking severe, he looked like a pouty little girl.
“Not now. I have a patient in the CRU,” I mumbled as Dan and I passed.
“We still need to talk,” Ken called after me. “I’ll find you later.”
I shrugged and didn’t turn around. I noted that Dan was sending shifty-eyed glances in my direction. I ignored him.
Angelica’s visit, apart from her being sleepy, was uneventful. She was nearing her fourth and final week on therapy, and some of her lab values had improved. I shared the news with Rose and was gratified to be on the receiving end of one of her strangling, full-body hugs.
I wished that Nico were there. The results were early but promising. I wanted to tell him in person, celebrate with him, with Rose and Angelica, with this family that I loved. Instead, the profound moment felt bittersweet.
Rose, Angelica, and their guards left shortly after the visit was over. Dan and I saw them off, then walked the corridor back to the ER. I was fighting against losing myself in my thoughts. I was looking for a distraction, any distraction that would keep me safe from any prolonged pity staycation.
Just as I thought I’ll take anything, any distraction whatsoever, anything but more morose meanderings, Megalomaniac Meg appeared out of nowhere and stepped into our path.
Before we could alter course, Meg darted forward toward Dan. Her eyes were wide and fearful; I registered the strangeness of her expression before I registered her words. “Oh my God, that woman. I saw that woman in the hospital. You have to come with me!”
Dan stiffened. “What woman? What did you see?”
Meg’s eyes bounced from me to Dan. “That woman who stalks Nico Moretti. She is here, in the hospital. I saw her.”
Automatically I shifted closer to Dan and he moved closer to me. “We need to get you out of here.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We should call the police first.”
“This freaking hospital only has cell coverage in the doctor’s lounge.” Dan ran a hand over his forehead and scanned the hallway.
“I know where she is.” Meg tossed a thumb over her shoulder. “You could go get her now.”
Dan glanced from me to Meg. “No, my first priority is to keep Dr. Finney safe.”
“But the safest thing to do is to remove her as a threat. If you go with Meg, I can go to the doctor’s lounge and call the police. You could restrain her until they arrive. Didn’t you say that Quinn’s legal team was working on getting the restraining order in place on Friday?”
Dan nodded then grimaced at his phone and its zero reception. He cursed again. “The restraining order went into effect today so, yes, if she is here, then she’ll be arrested.” He searched my eyes then glanced down the hall once more. “Fine. This is what we’ll do: I’ll walk you to the lounge—”
“But she might get away by then!” Meg sounded frantic, her arms moved wildly toward the hall.
He held his hands up, fending off Meg’s frenetic arm waving, and addressed me. “I will walk you there and you will stay put. This doctor,” he pointed at Meg, “will then take me to where she saw the woman. Meanwhile, you will call the police and Quinn, ok?”
I nodded, my hands sweating. I wiped them on my teal scrubs. Dan gripped my elbow and steered me to the break room. He released a steady string of expletives the entire way there.
When we arrived, he physically placed me in the room and glowered at me with what I assumed was his most serious I-mean-business face. “You will stay here until I get back.”
I swallowed, nodded, and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I pressed 9-1-1. “Fine. Yes. Just go get the loony toon so we can all rest easier.”
“We have to hurry!” Meg tugged on Dan’s hand.
He pulled it out of her grasp and swung his glower in her direction. Under the weight of it, she stumbled backward a few paces.
“After you.” He motioned to the hallway.
Meg, perhaps still a little wary after Dan’s impressively menacing scowl, fumbled for her footing and direction. Finally, after a delayed moment, they were off.
I walked farther into the empty room and crossed to the couch, and had just sat down when the 9-1-1 operator asked, “What is your emergency?”
I was poised to answer, but before I could, a voice that sent shivers of fear racing down my spine sounded from behind the entrance of the break room. “Put the phone down.”
My eyes shot up and I was looking directly at the Fancy Stalker, who must’ve been neatly tucked behind the door, and now she was shutting it. I was alone with the Fancy Stalker.
And she was holding a gun.
1 Translation: Love is not good if there is no fight.